Why Whippets.....?

Ryan & I have always had dogs of different breeds in our earlier lives but since being together started out with Gundogs (ESS,FC Retriever,Weimaraner) which Ryan trained to a very high level in the field but since we also have horses & they started to take up more and more of our time he found that he had less time for the intensive training that a working gundog needed,so a rethink was on the books...we needed a dog that had the stamina to keep up whilst we were out with the horses but yet could still be a house dog & have an easy enough coat to look after whenever we came home from a days hacking out in a muddy forest & of course Ryan still wanted a working dog of some sort,I had been smitten by whippets when I was a child as my father had bought me a beautiful diminutive blue parti boy in the early eighties so I knew how lovely a breed they are to live with and how versatile they can be and after doing a lot of research into types & strains within the breed we bought our first working/coursing whippet "Moss",which was soon added to by "Kizzy" a lovely rescue girl,then came along our first showgirl "Bracken" who we bought from Viv Coulter (Collooney).Of course Collooney Mamma Mia is not only our first show whippet but is also the foundation of Mossbawnhill. I had extensive experience of showing but with horses not dogs and although quite a few people in the horse showing world who also showed dogs had recommended dog showing to me Bracken was not bought to show but rather to work alongside Moss but when Viv saw her at the age of 13mths she thought that we would be mad not to give her a chance in the ring and so she was entered into Belfast Ch Show where she made her debut in the LB class and won it gaining her Stud Bk Number first time out!! (handled by Viv) and the rest as they say is history!

Initially we moved to our home "Mossbawn" in the country to accomodate our Thoroughbred horses and our small breeding programme which has since taken a back seat to our steadily increasing whippet family! We live about half a mile away from a beautiful beach and have two grass paddocks on the property ~ one for the dogs and one for the Jacobs sheep (a rare breed) and the poultry ~ we have another 5 acres of grazing land for the horses and are also lucky enough to have direct access to a bridle path from our property,which is great for the dogs and horses alike. The name "Mossbawn" came from the townland where our house sits so was very apt for the housename and just behind us is a hill known locally as "Mossbawnhill" hence our kennel name.

As mentioned above like many people in a round about way we got involved with showing dogs through the horses and one of the most important things to us in both the Thoroughbred & the Whippet is sound movement...they have that same low & easy free-flowing effortless action that is both desirable & essential if you need to run all day and so it goes without saying that any whippets we breed are sound and also functional...the majority of our adult dogs work including the "show team" & also enjoy some lure-coursing & straight racing from time to time,so we have proven just how versatile the lowly whippet really is!! We have made a lot of good friends in the breed both here and abroad & have not been without our successes in the ring & the whelping box and are very proud of the fact that after such a relatively short time in the breed we can now hold our own amongst the best and we look forward to what the future may bring.....